Paper valentines

& other messages of love

In the first and second grade, we decorated shoe boxes for Valentine’s Day with openings in the lids for receiving cards. I loved this day, the day of the Valentine party. It was sheer joy to sit down with my shoebox and all that red and pink construction paper, crepe paper, lace paper doilies, pipe cleaners, glitter.

When we were finished, our teachers wrote our names on the boxes and we left them lined up on the window sill of the classroom. We had each come to school that day with a box of cards, Snoopy or Strawberry Shortcake. The cards came in sheets that you pulled apart, the backside of each one had spaces for TO and FROM where we carefully printed our names and the names of our classmates.

We slipped the cards into the shoebox mailboxes and when we came back from lunch, we had a Valentine party, during which we ate cupcakes or heart shaped cookies coated in pink sugar, and red heart-shaped suckers, and we opened our shoe boxes, and dumped out all of our Valentines to sort.

In the later years of elementary school, we had another Valentine tradition. Surely this is a GenX specific memory, not something that would go on in an elementary school today. When I think back on it, I’m surprised that even we (feral and unprotected as we were) did it in elementary school. But, we did.

In the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, middle schoolers sat at a folding table set up in our elementary hallway with a gray metal money box and stacks of construction paper hearts in graduating size, plus large paper cupids. The smallest hearts cost 5 cents, the larger hearts were 25 or 50. The cupids were the most expensive item at $1.

When we bought a valentine, we wrote down our names and the name of the recipient and the message we wanted to include and on Valentine’s Day, these hearts and cupids appeared, taped to the walls in the hallway. We walked up and down, in between classes, on our way back from recess, and searched for our names, hoping that someone had sprung for the big heart or dare we even wish, a cupid with a message of love for us.

But this wasn’t like the shoebox days, where in a gesture of goodwill and camaraderie, we gave a card to every person in our class. These valentines were the real deal. Friends bought them for friends, kids bought them for teachers, teachers bought them for teachers, but most of all, crushers bought them for their crushes. Some people received multiple hearts. Some people, the most beloved among us, received cupids, and some people…nothing.

There was a always excitement on that day as we scanned the walls and read the messages. There was a lot of fawning, oos and ahs and laughter. At the end of the day, the Valentine recipients carefully pulled their construction paper missives from the wall and carried them home.

I remember the nervousness of writing a message and plunking down my nickel or dime, hoping my love would be reciprocated, the disappointment of not receiving a heart, or not receiving a heart from the person I hoped. I do also remember the sweet sensation of receiving a surprise heart and gently peeling it from the wall so I could take it home and hang it on my bedroom door. I remember what it felt like to watch other people collect their stacks of hearts and I remember one time, in the fifth grade, receiving a cupid. Even as I say this, I’m not one hundred percent sure that it happened. I think it did, but it may have been that I wished for it so hard, I created the memory.

I understand why some people dislike Valentine’s Day or eschew it as a made-up holiday (aren’t they all made-up?), but I love it and have always loved it, even when it has been disappointing or painful. Even when it has shone its heart-shaped spotlight on my loneliness, or revealed to me the subpar nature of a relationship.

I have loved Valentine’s Day through it all. I have loved it from the very beginning.

My whole life long, my favorite color combination has been hot pink and red with a splash of leopard print. I love velvet and quilted satin, heart shaped boxes, lace and feathers. I love chocolate and cupids with their arrows (I almost wrote poison darts, which may be more accurate but no, it's arrows) and romance. I love love, my darlings. Against my own best interest sometimes. I simply love it and have always loved it. My birthday is the day after, and so I have always claimed it as my own, felt Valentine’s Day as a part of me somehow.

If Tracy and I ever end up living in a little cottage in the woods as our hearts would like for us to do, I will decorate it in a Valentine’s theme all year round. People hiking through our woods will glimpse our house through the trees, a puff of smoke rising from our chimney and say look, “The Valentine witch lives down there.”

Anyone passing by on February 14th might see me sitting by a fire in the snow, wearing a floor length hot pink gown and faux fur leopard print coat, sipping cinnamon tea from a heart-shaped mug, surrounded by dogs and cats and foxes wearing Valentine sweaters. (Tracy is inside at the stove, making Indian food.) “It is her birthday eve,” they will say.

This year, my birthday is not exactly a milestone, but it is a nice plump midway number. 55. It means everything and nothing all at once. I understand now that it is only our bodies that age. Our minds and hearts - our souls - stay the same. I learn and grow and evolve as I get older, but I don’t change. I become more open-minded, my politics move further to the left, I am easier and easier inside my skin, but at my essence, I don’t change.

Thinking too hard about my current placement on the map of life can throw me into a panic of despair, because I haven’t truly begun to create the things I want to create. I know what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m just now getting started. I plan on living well into my 100s, and I think it’s possible that ours will be the first generation to make a longevity leap, so I’m not excessively worried about time, but I can’t deny that the ticking clock has moved…well…closer to me. And while I’m not overly concerned about what my neck looks like or the elasticity of my skin in general, I am quite aware how the rest of the world sees a woman of my age, or more accurately, doesn’t see.

I have made unconventional choices, and I live in a conventional place. As a result, my life doesn’t look like other people’s lives. I don’t always fit into the groove of other women my age. Sometimes, I can tell, they don’t know quite what to make of me and I don’t know how to bridge the gap between us.

Sometimes as a child-free, Covid conscious, middle aged creative who plays dress up and talks to invisible beings, I feel a little lonely. But I never feel alone. I have the foxes in their sweaters, the rich brocade walls of my imagination, my little pug soulmate, my partner, my family, and my very true best friends forever.

I have magic in my life. The red-tail hawks that sit on my fence. The aroma of the peanut butter factory on Saturday mornings. Satin heart pajamas. The dark-roast button on my coffee maker. The journal my brother gave me for Christmas with the bee on the cover.

I also have you - people of the glowing screen, people who read these words, people who inhabit my heart. I am grateful for you and dazzled by you and I want you to know - especially if you, too, ever feel out of sorts or out of step or like you're just getting started even though the world is telling you you’re done - that I’m buying you the biggest paper cupid they’ve got.

This is your reminder that you are far from done.

You are here, alive and pulsing with energy. You are the only you - glorious, complex, beautiful, layered, and divine. Love moves through you and surrounds you. The ground you walk is enchanted. You have a voice as rich as local honey and a story that will change the world.

This is your reminder that I see you. I see how deeply you feel. I see how important you are to the fabric of things, the very of nature of reality. I see your worth.

If you hear me say, Happy Valentine’s Day, please know that this is what I mean.